Employer All Star Awards

Universal Judging Guidelines

established: November 2009

To provide an objective evaluation process that encompasses qualitative and quantitative analysis in a diverse, team-oriented setting, we have enhanced the judging guidelines for all judges on an awards committee.

To ensure consistency in the awards process, we highly recommend that all judges participate in a training session to review, understand, and strictly adhere to the evaluation methods, as well as utilize the respective materials.

To enhance the transparency of the evaluation process, the essential elements of the universal judging guidelines are outlined below.

  1. Each award category will have a minimum of 5 judges, but no more than 10, and be led by an appointed chairperson.
  2. For 2010 moving forward, each award category chairperson can serve a maximum of 2 years on the same award committee.  (After their commitment on this committee has been completed, they are welcome to leverage their background to serve on another award committee.)
  3. All judges must be committed to the Employer All Stars timeline and available for crucial deadlines in early March to review, analyze, and evaluate award applications for their committee.  The time commitment will span from March 1st through mid-March with an estimate of 10 hours of volunteer time. 
  4. All Chairpersons must distribute their materials at least 72 hours in advance of their committee’s evaluation meeting to ensure that each committee member has ample time to review each employer’s application.
  5. All awards judges for each committee must participate in person at the initial evaluation meeting or via conference call.  No remote participation is permitted as all judges need to be present during the entire evaluation process.
  6. In this meeting, the Chairperson will facilitate a constructive, objective group discussion and reiterate the guidelines communicated in the training sessions for judging, especially for the usage of a quantifiable evaluation method.
  7. All committees will utilize a universal evaluation method containing a spreadsheet with tabs for each individual judge’s score and a cumulative score averaging all judges’ submissions.  The evaluation spreadsheet will be distributed to all award category chairpersons by the Awards Chair prior to the 72-hour distribution deadline.  This will ensure consistency in judging each category based on the application requirements per category.
  8. After the initial evaluation meeting, the individual judges will submit their ratings to their chairperson, who will roll-up all submissions and present the finalized results to the committee in another meeting, which can be face to face or on a conference call. 
  9. Then, the chairperson will submit their committee’s results to the Awards Chairperson.
  10. The entire process will remain confidential and the participating judges must commit to maintaining confidentiality about all information associated with this process.  A mandatory “Confidentiality Form” is to be signed by all volunteers per panel.

Questions?
Contact Paige Rosemond